So instead of publicly noting that yes, Starhawk's servers are going down tomorrow and actually giving prior notice way before then. Sony just quietly added it on the Store page. pretty much guaranteeing that almost everyone wouldn't know until it's too late.

This is straight up battleship, at least let people know when you're shutting the dang game down instead of just casually letting it die without telling anyone. StarHawk was pretty good from what i played back then too, and i definitely would have came back to it if i knew it was shutting down.

Gah this will only keep getting worse as games become more and more dependent on the cloud. Will there ever be enough backlash to make the industry stop this?

Backlash for what? Shutting down the online service of a 6 year old game that bombed on launch that no one has been playing in ages? Apparently this message has been on the store page for a month and it took until a couple days ago for people to even notice, that should really tell you something.

None of the people acting upset over this now were ever going to play this again. I guarantee it.

Backlash for what? Shutting down the online service of a 6 year old game that bombed on launch that no one has been playing in ages? Apparently this message has been on the store page for a month and it took until a couple days ago for people to even notice, that should really tell you something.

None of the people acting upset over this now were ever going to play this again. I guarantee it.

Backlash over games having an expiration date.

There's no reason networking has to work like this. If it was a priority during development, old games could keep running online for essentially free. It'd only cost money based off how many active players the game has.

There's no reason networking has to work like this. If it was a priority during development, old games could keep running online for essentially free. It'd only cost money based off how many active players the game has.

Online games will always have an expiration date simply based on the active player base, I'm pretty sure Starhawk was already essentially unplayable online anyways. And we have enough "backlash" and "outrage" over dumb shame online already, we don't need people constructing imaginary scenarios that have them totally picking something like Starhawk back up in 2020 or so, so they can now act mad because this game that most people haven't played at all and that even people who played it haven't touched in 5 years is going offline.

Online games will always have an expiration date simply based on the active player base, I'm pretty sure Starhawk was already essentially unplayable online anyways. And we have enough "backlash" and "outrage" over dumb shame online already, we don't need people constructing imaginary scenarios that have them totally picking something like Starhawk back up in 2020 or so, so they can now act mad because this game that most people haven't played at all and that even people who played it haven't touched in 5 years is going offline.

Again nothing to do with Starhawk ouside of it being a game losing servers.

Lacking people to play with is not the same thing since that can be managed by communities/the players themselves.

Outrage would be extreme for this but backlash makes sense. Especially since lots of times these games aren't as old and still have regular players.

I think the thing you're missing is the perspective of people who think of their games as a collection. Many people buy and sell their games, but personally I never sell them and I pull out old systems a few times a year.

Again nothing to do with Starhawk ouside of it being a game losing servers.

Lacking people to play with is not the same thing since that can be managed by communities/the players themselves.

Outrage would be extreme for this but backlash makes sense. Especially since lots of times these games aren't as old and still have regular players.

I think the thing you're missing is the perspective of people who think of their games as a collection. Many people buy and sell their games, but personally I never sell them and I pull out old systems a few times a year.

No, I'm not missing that perspective, I don't sell games myself. I simply consider the scenario you're describing (group of players organize themselves to play a 6 year old game, that wasn't popular to begin with), to be such an incredibly rare case that no company should be obligated to keep servers running to accomodate for it.

Companies see their player data and treat servers accordingly. Why do you think there hasn't been any real backlash to this? Because nobody plays these games anymore.

No, I'm not missing that perspective, I don't sell games myself. I simply consider the scenario you're describing (group of players organize themselves to play a 6 year old game, that wasn't popular to begin with), to be such an incredibly rare case that no company should be obligated to keep servers running to accomodate for it.

Companies see their player data and treat servers accordingly. Why do you think there hasn't been any real backlash to this? Because nobody plays these games anymore.

There has been a lot of backlash? Players often do big last get togethers when servers are going down and sometimes they even manage to get companies to keep them up longer.

Also never underestimate the amount of games with weird cult followings. IE this thread and the linked on about people being upset James Cameron's Avatar game was shut down. (I was upset back then too!)

Online games will always have an expiration date simply based on the active player base

Yeah. But a lot of games have very low requirements for online matches. Easy to find some that simply require 3-18 players at a time .

The reason games get shut down is because they have servers dedicated to that game. It doesn't have to work that way. Games can be dynamically given resources or have resources taken away as players come and go. Works exactly the same as a dedicated server performance wise.

But if resources are dynamically allocated, games with no players will take up essentially zero resources. Popular games will run as they normally would.

There is no real downside to setting it up this way, and tons of pros. The only hassle is setting up a cloud infrastructure, which most companies already have.

Yeah. But a lot of games have very low requirements for online matches. Easy to find some that simply require 3-18 players at a time .

The reason games get shut down is because they have servers dedicated to that game. It doesn't have to work that way. Games can be dynamically given resources or have resources taken away as players come and go. Works exactly the same as a dedicated server performance wise.

But if resources are dynamically allocated, games with no players will take up essentially zero resources. Popular games will run as they normally would.

There is no real downside to setting it up this way, and tons of pros. The only hassle is setting up a cloud infrastructure, which most companies already have.

This is why I miss P2P servers (I'm sure any PS3 game will work as long as the match making portion of PSN stays running for PS3) and would have preferred Sony to keep them free but charge for dedicated servers. Close enough to what you're suggesting, except already had been implemented.